Morphing the Manequim sweater pattern to my size

Since the pattern is only in one size, “Small”, my strategy was to take an existing long sleeved teeshirt pattern that I know fits me well, trace that, then trace the neckline area from the Manequim pattern overlaid onto it and morph the two together. For simplicity’s sake, I wanted to keep the collar piece as unaltered as possible.

Here’s that wonderful diagram again showing how the Manequim pattern fits together, so we all have an idea in our head of what we’re aiming towards:

While overlaying the Manequim pattern onto mine, I wasn’t quite sure what I should use as the “frame of reference” to align the two patterns together – should I use the Centre Front & Centre Back? Or the shoulder seam/armscye corner?

In the end, it turned out that sorting out the Back first was the key to making the bigger changes on the Front piece work, since the Back of my teeshirt and the Back of this pattern were much more similar.

I’ve shaded my final pattern shapes in blue here to try to make it clearer. The original teeshirt pattern is (mostly) at the cut edge of the paper. Ignore the red lines – they were misaligned tracings!

Since the pattern is only in one size, “Small”, my strategy was to take an existing long sleeved teeshirt pattern that I know fits me well, trace that, then trace the neckline area from the Manequim pattern overlaid onto it and morph the two together. For simplicity’s sake, I wanted to keep the collar piece as unaltered as possible.

Here’s that wonderful diagram again showing how the Manequim pattern fits together, so we all have an idea in our head of what we’re aiming towards:

While overlaying the Manequim pattern onto mine, I wasn’t quite sure what I should use as the “frame of reference” to align the two patterns together – should I use the Centre Front & Centre Back? Or the shoulder seam/armscye corner?

In the end, it turned out that sorting out the Back first was the key to making the bigger changes on the Front piece work, since the Back of my teeshirt and the Back of this pattern were much more similar.

I’ve shaded my final pattern shapes in blue here to try to make it clearer. The original teeshirt pattern is (mostly) at the cut edge of the paper. Ignore the red lines – they were misaligned tracings!

First, I placed mark 1 at the shoulder/armscyce corner, then measured the distance between 1 and 2 on the Manequim pattern and placed it the same distance apart on my pattern. Then I measured the distance between 2 and the corner on the collar pattern (I labelled this “a” for my own sanity), and marked this distance on my pattern as the edge of the shoulder seam, also marking this “a”. I then realised that the distance between “a” and the Centre Back (5) was absolutely going to be longer than between “a” and 5 on the collar piece, so I drew a nice neck curve there, measured it (with my Japanese pizza wheel tool), and had to add a bit of length into the collar piece to make it match. C’est la vie.

Addition to the Collar piece…

Having completed the Back piece, I then moved on to the Front, which only has a very short shoulder seam (between marks 1 and 2), because the collar takes up the rest of the width there. This is actually really similar to the shoulder seam on Paco’s Draped collar tunic pattern actually!

So I aligned the shoulder/armscye corners of the Front and Back, and marked that 1 on my Front piece. I then marked 2 at the same point where it matches up with the Back:

On the Front neckline, there’s a mark 3 midway down which shows where the collar overlap stops, so I measured the Collar piece between 2 and 3, and drew a line of the same length on my Front piece. Then I measured the Collar piece between mark 3 and mark 4 (the Centre Front), since I knew that whatever neckline curve I drew on my piece between marks 3 and 4 had to be this same length (unless I changed the Collar piece again, which I didn’t fancy doing).

So with a bit of finagling with my French curves, I got a line that was the same length, though you can see my neckline will be slightly higher and wider than the Manequim pattern, but I’m thinking that shouldn’t be a big deal.

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About Me

Melissa Fehr

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Fehr Trade was founded in 2005 by Melissa Fehr, but she's been sewing in every scrap of spare time since 2001, also taking up running at about the same time. In 2013 both interests collided when Melissa released her first digital sewing patterns for activewear, and she hasn't stopped moving or sewing since! So far she's run five full marathons in her own-sewn gear, and also enjoys cycling and bouldering whenever she can.
All FehrTrade patterns have been road-tested by Melissa and a team of fellow fit sewists. Her studio space is in her floating home in London on the Thames (far, far away from her childhood home in Perry County, Pennsylvania). You can see more of her personal designs on FehrTrade.com.